Mississippi
A Thousand Places Left Behind
Born and raised in Mississippi, Peter K. Lutken, Jr. (1920–2014) joined the army in 1941 and was assigned to the Coast Artillery. Originally sent to India to guard airfields, he was reassigned to the ...
To Dance, to Live
Thalia Mara’s story spans the history of dance in the twentieth century and the rise of the arts in her adopted city of Jackson, Mississippi. As an adolescent Mara (1911–2003) studied with renowned ...
A Slow, Calculated Lynching
In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, countless Black citizens endured violent resistance and even death while fighting for their constitutional rights. One of those citizens, Clyde Kennard ...
The Struggle of Struggles
From 1955 to 1975, Vera Pigee (1924–2007) put her life and livelihood on the line with grassroots efforts for social change in Mississippi, principally through her years of leadership in Coahoma County’s ...
Old Southwest to Old South
Mississippi’s foundational epoch—in which the state literally took shape—has for too long remained overlooked and shrouded in misunderstanding. Yet the years between 1798, when the Mississippi Territory ...
Going Up the Country
At the height of the blues revival, Marina Bokelman and David Evans, young graduate students from California, made two trips to Louisiana and Mississippi and short trips in their home state to do fieldwork ...
Heritage and Hoop Skirts
For over eighty years, tourists have flocked to Natchez, Mississippi, seeking the “Old South,” but what they encounter is invention: a pageant and rewrite of history first concocted during the Great ...
To the Ramparts of Infinity
Before William Faulkner, there was Colonel William C. Falkner (1825–1889), the great-grandfather of the prominent and well-known Mississippi writer. The first biography of Falkner was a dissertation ...
William Faulkner Day by Day
William Faulkner has been the topic of numerous biographies, papers, and international attention. Yet there are no collected resources providing a comprehensive scope of Faulkner’s life and work before ...
Behind the Rifle
During the Civil War, Mississippi’s strategic location bordering the Mississippi River and the state’s system of railroads drew the attention of opposing forces who clashed in major battles for control ...